For those of you who weren't here on Christmas Eve, or who slept through my homily, a significant portion of A Prayer for Owen Meany takes place around Advent and Christmas in a little Episcopal Church in New England. It's about Johnny Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany, a short kid with a "wrecked voice."

On Christmas Eve, I read about how Owen managed to pull off a coup at the Christmas Pageant rehearsal, wresting creative control from Barb Wiggin, the rector's wife, and securing for himself the non-speaking role of the Baby Jesus. Further, he orchestrated it so that his best friend Johnny was given the part of Joseph. Johnny, as Joseph, tells us of the high point of the nativity scene:

Mary Beth Baird [the girl who was playing Mary and who had a crush on Owen] dropped to her knees and lowered her head; she was an awkward girl, and this sudden movement caused her to lose her balance. She assumed a three-point position, finally-on her knees, with her forehead resting on the mountain of hay, the top of her head pressing against Owen's hip.

Owen raised his hand over her, to bless her; in a most detached manner, he lightly touched her hair-then his hand hovered above her head…

The shepherds and kings were riveted to this demonstration of what Mary pondered in her heart; the cows did not move. Even the hind parts of the donkeys who could not see the Holy Mother bowing to the Baby Jesus-or anything at all-appeared to sense that the moment was reverential; they ceased their swaying, and the donkeys' tails hung straight and still. Barb Wiggin had stopped breathing, with her mouth open, and the rector wore the numbed expression of one struck silly with awe. And I, Joseph-I did nothing, I was just the witness.

"And I, Joseph-I did nothing, I was just the witness." In this morning's gospel, we are presented with a Joseph who is indeed a witness, but much more than a mere bystander gawking at the transcendent mystery of God made flesh in Jesus Christ. Even Johnny Wheelwright, who played Joseph, is more than "just" the witness, for it is his very witnessing and re-telling of the story of Owen Meany as the Little Lord Jesus that conveys to us the transcendent moment of awe. For his part, the biblical Joseph doesn't just stand there, mute and awkward. He dreams, he flees, he acts, he protects.

Still, as I noted last year, we don't often hear too much about good old Joseph, except here and in two other places: an earlier story in Matthew of how an Angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to go ahead and marry Mary, and the story in Luke of the adolescent Jesus in the Temple.

There aren't many things one can say about Joseph based on his few guest appearances in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but, as I noted last year, one of the few things I can say for certain about Joseph was that he sure seemed to sleep a lot. In two of the three stories in which Joseph plays a prominent part, much of the main action takes place while he's asleep, for in both of those stories an Angel appears to Joseph in a dream and gives him some crucial Intelligence. In this morning's gospel, in fact, Joseph has not just one dream, or two dreams, but three! The third of these stories (which by the way the lectionary lists as an alternate reading for today) is about how Mary and Joseph lose Jesus in Jerusalem and find him in the Temple after three days of anxious searching. Maybe if old Joe had just taken a break from his search and taken a nap instead, an Angel would've told him where to find Jesus. I don't know. But it would have been worth a try.

Maybe one of the reasons Joseph slept so much was that he was already an old man. According to ancient Church tradition, Joseph was a widower with children from his previous marriage when he married Mary, and the reason tradition gives of why he doesn't appear in the gospels after the story of the twelve year-old Jesus in the Temple is because he died shortly thereafter (perhaps of stress-this guy was always dreaming and fleeing and searching, after all). Or maybe he died in his sleep. It certainly wasn't from sleep deprivation, I can tell you that.

Not a lot to go on, is there? Yet, I think we can learn at least two things about Joseph (and from Joseph) from his dreamy and anxious appearances in these stories. The first is that even when Joseph was asleep, he was awake to God's presence, and this raises for me the question of whether we, too, can be as awake to God as Joseph was. The second is that Joseph was Jesus' guardian, not merely in the sense of a "legal guardian," but as a protector, and this raises for me the question of what "guardianship" might mean in our lives today.

But let's take these two things one at a time. First things first: Even asleep, Joseph was awake. For Joseph was awake to God's presence. It is pretty remarkable how attentive Joseph was to his dreams, and how his actions, decisive and immediate, indicate the depth of his faith in God's active and intimate presence in his life. Waking and sleeping, Joseph was attentive to God. Joseph's whole life, we could say, was dedicated to discerning God's will.

Are we as awake as Joseph was even when Joseph was asleep? Do we take God seriously enough to believe that God's presence and will for our lives can be expressed in the everyday realities of our existence? Do we really believe that God is the One "in whom we live and move and have our being?" If our answer is yes to these questions, then we are on the road to living a discerning life. But if we are uncertain or our answer is no, then I believe we need to re-evaluate how much control we've been willing to allow God to have over our lives. For you never know-you never know-when one of God's messengers-whether in the form of an Angel, or your spouse, or child, or friend, or neighbor, or anyone else-is going to ask you to take a risk, to do something that stretches you beyond your comfort zones, but which will somehow hallow your life to God's glory and the benefit of your neighbor.

Think of what Joseph was asked to do: marry an unwed teenage mother, find an adequate place for her to give birth among the muck and mess of a crowded town during tax season. Flee to a foreign country. Spend three days looking for a kid in downtown Jerusalem who wasn't even his own progeny. Joseph had a thankless job, and yet, God bless him, old Joe was awake to God's presence. Old Joe listened for God's voice in the Angel, in his wife, in the twelve year-old who asks, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" Even though Joseph probably never understood what it all meant, and might have died before Jesus had even begun his adult ministry, Joseph knew that his job was to listen to God and be faithful to God's voice.

Joseph did his job well-and this brings us to the second thing about Joseph we can learn from him: Joseph was a "guardian" in the fullest sense of the word, and his example in turn calls us to be faithful guardians of what God has entrusted to us.

Think of the ways in which Joseph was a guardian and protector to Christ: He protected the unborn Jesus by shielding Mary from public humiliation and possible death by stoning. He protected the newborn Jesus by taking him to Egypt when Herod was out for blood. He protected the adolescent Jesus by searching for him when he was lost in Jerusalem. And finally, when the adult Jesus no longer needs an earthly father for a guardian, Joseph recedes silently into the background.

Being a guardian is also often a thankless task, as I've been told by many parents. To my mind, Joseph's steadfast guardianship of Jesus makes him one of the humblest of the saints. I imagine he was a rather unassuming man, and that he would even be surprised to find himself held up as a paragon of attentiveness and protectiveness. He's the sort of saint who most deserves his halo, and yet who probably least coveted it.

On Christmas morning last year, a funny thing happened that symbolized to me Joseph's profound humility. At one point during the homily, I looked at the figures of Mary and Joseph on the retable, and I noticed that Mary had a halo but Joseph did not. That was strange. How typical, I thought, for Joseph to be overshadowed yet again by his more famous wife. But then I remembered that as the service began, I had casually noticed something shiny under the altar. I suddenly realized that the shiny thing under the altar was, in fact, Joseph's halo. I smiled, and at the offertory, I retrieved his halo and put it back on Joseph's head, where it belonged.

I was reminded then of a passage from the book of Revelation. John sees a vision of God enthroned, surrounded by saints "dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads" who "fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, 'O Lord our God, you are worthy to receive glory and honor and power, for you have created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.'" No doubt, Joseph was among those who cast their crowns before God's throne in John's vision, just as Joseph's halo was cast under God's altar. When that image from Revelation came to me, I realized that just like Joseph, I, too, could be awake to God's presence in the here-and-now, even in such seemingly insignificant little things. I realized that we are all, in fact, called to such wakefulness.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and so instead of going on for another ten minutes, I thought I'd close with a brief meditation on the picture of him that stands out most in my mind when I think about Joseph. For in my office, I have this ikon of an elderly-looking Joseph and a rather precocious-looking Christ child. (I encourage you to take a closer look at it during communion and after church.) Joseph is bearing Jesus in the crook of his arm, and in Joseph's left hand is an Easter lily-a sign of the Resurrection. Joseph's right hand is clasped in Jesus' hand, and the wizened eyes of the Christ child gaze outward, directly into the eyes of the viewer. Jesus' expression is rather like the Mona Lisa's, I think. He is smiling faintly, his eyes asking, "Is Joseph holding me or am I holding Joseph?" The answer, of course, is yes to both parts. Joseph is guarding Jesus just as Jesus is guarding Joseph.

Like Johnny Wheelwright playing Joseph in the Christmas Pageant, one could be led to say that in this ikon, Joseph is doing nothing-that he is "just" a witness, a bystander. But if you look closer, you will notice that Joseph's eyes gaze into the distance, beyond the viewer, as if standing witness to something over the viewer's right shoulder. What is he witnessing? Does he see an Angel? Is he daydreaming? Or maybe he's getting drowsy; the Christ child is heavy in his old arm. He looks ready to take a nap, to dream of Angels. Yet at the same time Joseph is awake, clasping and clasped by Jesus' own protective hand, protecting the one who has always protected him.